Dear readers:
Unfortunately my previous crowdfunding campaign failed to reach its target and therefore all pledges were returned. I have now started a new campaign with a more modest target:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/help-expose-twitter-trolls/
If you can, I would greatly appreciate your help with this effort.
In solidarity,
Peter
Filed under Uncategorized
Loyal readers:
Since September of last year I have been involved in a legal case in the UK against an anonymous Twitter account for defamation. Having suffered years of abuse from Zionist Twitter trolls, I decided it was time to take a stand and call their bluff after having been smeared as an “anti-Semite” – a completely false accusation that I categorically deny and deeply resent. I am now on the cusp of exposing the account operator’s identity, which would mean I could then move forward with legal action seeking damages for reputational harm.
At this point, I have exhausted my own resources and so have set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for my legal costs. Please consider contributing if you can. Instructions for how to do so can be found here at CrowdJustice:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-online-attacks/
This case is just one of many against a network of anonymous Twitter accounts that go about smearing whoever dares to hold the Zionist state to account for its apartheid policies and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestine. Others who have been targeted by these trolls have lost their jobs, faced ongoing harassment, and, in one particular sad case, even committed suicide following a Twitter pile-on based on false allegations of antisemitism. I am pursuing this case as much on their behalf as on my own.
This case could serve as an important bellweather for the wider Palestinian solidarity movement. Any help you can provide would help me and my legal team land a body blow to the Zionist propaganda machine and set a powerful precedent for future legal proceedings relating to the Israel lobby’s ongoing smear campaign against pro-Palestinian journalists and activists.
In solidarity,
Peter
Filed under Uncategorized
Since the publication of my essay on the background of the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia, the piece has been republished at CounterPunch and LA Progressive in addition to Popular Resistance where it first appeared. This morning, I appeared on the Washington DC-based radio show By Any Means Necessary to discuss the article. Listen to the interview here (skip forward about nine and half minutes to get straight to part when I appear).
Filed under Uncategorized
Dear readers: You may have noticed that I have taken something of a hiatus from writing for the last two months. This was due to a coalescing of several factors, some personal, others professional, not least of which is my now considerable graduate school workload. You might have also noticed that I have remained conspicuously silent on the situation in Ukraine. This has been in part because I believe that there are ultimately no good guys in this conflict — neither the Ukrainian government and its Western backers nor Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It is also because, while I believe strongly that this all could have been avoided had the West honored its post-Cold War promise to leave Ukraine out of NATO, I also do not wish to appear to endorse the decision to invade or the actions of the Russian military throughout the course of the conflict. Moreover, these arguments have already been well made by others more qualified to do so than I and so I have decided not to repeat them myself. However, I have decided to break my silence and contribute something that I hope provides a unique perspective that has received less attention in both the corporate-owned and independent media — namely, an assessment of what led to the rise of Vladimir Putin in the first place.
In this essay, published at Popular Resistance, CounterPunch and LA Progressive, I hope to provide a compelling account of the historical context in which this happened. I ultimately conclude that the best hope for the country’s future is for the Russian people to elect a Communist Party-led government. Saying this, however, does not constitute an adulation of the Soviet system, an excusal of the many errors that its leaders made (especially during the counterrevolutionary Stalinist period), or an endorsement of communism as an ideology. But the fact remains that the Communist Party has gone through a process of reform and modernization and now advocates for a more moderate form of socialism. It has, however, retained its name in order to neither disavow nor deny its history and also, as I hope to show, because of the lasting popularity of some aspects of the Soviet era. Finally, I wish to make clear that this essay is a piece of independent political analysis and I do not speak for or on behalf of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Thank you for your continued support and interest in my writing. Peter Bolton, New York City, March 30, 2022
Filed under Popular Resistance
As The Canary has extensively reported, the ongoing war in Yemen has seen Saudi-led forces commit atrocity after atrocity. But on 21 January, the Saudi dictatorship appears to have reached a new low in an attack that killed scores of civilians.
Given that Saudi Arabia is the US’s second biggest ally in the Middle East, its conduct in the war exposes the US’s brazen double standards when it comes to human rights. The war itself, meanwhile, stands as a testament to the US’s shameless use of proxy wars to further its own geostrategic interests.
Filed under The Canary
As The Canary has consistently reported, the US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela has been degenerating into an increasingly pathetic and embarrassing spectacle. Now, in one final gasp of desperation, Juan Guaidó has called for a fresh round of protests next month. But it looks like he and his dwindling band of followers’ hopes of toppling the government will soon be dashed. Because there are now growing calls for his prosecution for crimes including treason.
Washington and its mouthpieces in the corporate-owned media will surely crow that this somehow constitutes ‘proof’ of the Venezuelan government’s authoritarian nature. But the reality is that the US is, if anything, even less tolerant of the kind of behavior that its proxies in Venezuela have engaged in as part of their attempt to seize power.
Filed under The Canary
As The Canary extensively reported during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, figures from the Conservative Party, the Labour right, and the establishment media orchestrated a transparently politically-motivated smear campaign against him. Their weapon of choice was employing a litany of bogus accusations of antisemitism to paint the lifelong anti-racism campaigner as some kind of bigot.
The purpose of the campaign was straightforward – they sought to derail his chances of becoming prime minister and distract attention from his (widely popular) policy proposals. Their motive was equally straightforward – they rightly feared the threat that a Corbyn-led government would pose to the status quo and their own political and economic interests. Now, one of the major players in this campaign has admitted that its whole underlying premise was false all along.
Filed under The Canary
Presidential elections in Honduras have resulted in a decisive victory for the race’s socialist candidate. This puts to an end over a decade of US-backed right-wing rule and offers hope for a better future for the beleaguered Central American nation.
But that hope should be tempered by the fact that Honduras has suffered from years of US intervention. In Latin America, meddling from the northern hegemon is a lingering threat for any country that refuses to bow to its power. Washington will likely soon be looking for ways to undermine this new government if it fails to uphold US economic and geostrategic interests.
Filed under The Canary
On October 25, about two weeks before Nicaragua’s 2021 presidential election, the Socialist International (SI) released a statement titled Nicaragua: A Contemporary Victim of Absolute Power. Given the steady stream of tendentious twaddle about Nicaragua that’s been disseminated from Washington and dutifully repeated by the corporate-owned media, one might reasonably assume that the global federation of social democratic and labor parties would at least provide some semblance of balance.
But far from adding nuance, the statement reads as if it were a press release sent directly from the US State Department. Apparently, the SI isn’t interested in supporting socialist movements in other countries unless they are pro-Washington neoliberal-lite formations in the vein of Tony Blair’s Labour Party in the United Kingdom and Gerhard Schroder’s Social Democratic Party in Germany.
Filed under Orinoco Tribune
The publication of the Panama Papers in 2016, and then the Paradise Papers in 2017, revealed a huge amount of information about how the world’s ultrarich avoid tax and hide their wealth from regulators and public scrutiny. Now, an even bigger treasure trove of documents has been leaked to journalists. And as with the previous two leaks, amongst those implicated include some of the world’s most powerful political elites.
Filed under The Canary
